AHC/WI: US supports Suez action
- Thread starter Keperry
- Start date
Delta Force
Banned
The British and French should have consulted more with the United States and waited until after the 1956 Election to begin combat operations. The Eisenhower Administration couldn't condemn the Soviet intervention in Hungary and run on a peace platform while supporting the Anglo-French intervention.
Alternatively, the British and French could have gone in more aggressively and decisively and presented their gains as a fait accompli.
A good many people think it would have resulted in the fall of Nasser. I expressed skepticism on this point some years ago:
Nasser seems to me to have been in a
strong internal position by 1956: the Wafd party had been dissolved after
the 1952 revolution, Naguib and his followers purged from the army in 1954,
and leading Communists imprisoned and the Muslim Brotherhood outlawed that
same year. Just who could challenge him in 1956 any more successfully than
in 1967, when losing the Six Day War doesn't seem to have undermined his
power at all?
Nor is 1967 the only proof that losing a war is not necessarily politically
fatal in the Middle East: note Saddam Hussein's survival after his failures
in his 1980-88 war against Iran and in the Gulf War of 1991. Unless the
Western powers were ready to occupy all of Egypt and go after Nasser
*physically* as the US did with Saddam Hussein in 2003, I don't see him
losing power in 1956. On the contrary, by proclaiming continued guerrilla
resistance against the West and Israel, he could be more of a national hero
than ever. (True, the economy would suffer, but Soviet aid would releive the
situation to some extent.)"
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sS7S56AIe60/xMRqaEZwz5UJ
***
I responded to an objection:
> How does Soviet aid reach Egypt? They can't get it through Israel-
> Sinai. Libya at this time was pro-west, and I think Sudan was still
> British occupied. If you mine or blockade Alexandria harbor, you're
> reduced to smuggling in small boats and dragging materiel through the
> desert. What was Soviet heavy airlift capacity at this time?
>
First of all, I doubt that the UK and France (who maintained the pretence
that they intervened simply in order to "separate" the Egyptian and
Israeli armies) are going to blockade or mine Alexandria (unless the
Soviets try to use it to land troops). Second, even if they do, there
will presumably be *some* airlifting of Soviet aid, though I don't know
just what their capacity was. Third, Idris would be under very severe
pressure to allow at least economic aid to go through to Egypt:
"To protect its alliances with the Western powers and to avoid regional
interference in its domestic affairs, the king chose a policy of
neutrality in the inter-Arab conflicts between the more radical states and
the more conservative ones. Although publicly King Idris supported all the
Arab causes and Libya voted along with other Arab states in the United
Nations, in fact, little else was done.
"Nevertheless, it was almost impossible to remain completely uninvolved in
the affairs of the Arab world. The Suez Canal crisis of 1956, for
instance, affected Libya directly. Despite the fact that the Libyan
government supported Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser's
nationalization of the Suez Canal, an action that could have eroded
British support for Libya, and asked Britain for guarantees that it would
not use its bases in Libya to attack Egypt, the king faced serious
domestic and regional criticism. In Tripoli demonstrations broke out in
support of Nasser and condemning the tripartite attack on Egypt. The
demonstrators demanded the breaking off of relations with France and
Britain and threatened to attack the British forces stationed in Libya.
Egypt intervened directly in the affairs of Libya, by encouraging the
disturbances, distributing arms, and promoting attacks on American and
British military installations. Although the king was able to weather that
storm without having to break off relations with his Western allies or
suffering further retaliation from Egypt, this crisis was the precursoe of
more serious events to come." Bernard Reich (ed.), *Political Leaders of
the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa: A Biographical Dictionary,*
pp. 254-5.
http://books.google.com/books?id=3D5FulN2WqQC&pg=PA254&sig=ACfU3U2wt9bzpdy2KEDAWqBmxwvgtE69og
If Idris could get into so much trouble simply for not breaking off
relations with the UK and France, can you imagine the popular response to
his actually cooperating with them in an economic blockade of Egypt?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sS7S56AIe60/k1qtSlxFr74J
***
And to another Nasser-would-be-doomed advocate:
A few comments on some issues raised by your posts:
(1) The loyalty of the military: This was a matter of the highest
priority for Nasser:
"With the dissolution and proscription of the Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood],
the elimination of General Naguib and the virtual suppression of all
organised party opposition, the RCC [Revolutionary Command Council]
emerged, at the end of 1954, as the undisputed ruling elite--the political
directorate--of Egypt....Within the RCC and the lesser ranks of the Free
Officers, personal loyalty to Nasser soon became the condition for
political survival. Those who initially harboured independent political
views were either relegated to unimportant sinecures or dismissed.
Colonels Ahmad Shawqi and Lufti Wakid of Infantry, for example, were
ejected early on for their leftist tendencies. Kahlid Mohieddin paid the
price for his defection during the Nasser-Naguib rift and for his
Communist leanings with exile to Europe. Muslim Brother Abdul Rauf was
expelled from the Free Officers' executive...
"The combination of his early purges and the defeat of Naguib [in 1954] in
effect put Nasser on the road to controlling the armed forces. Without
Field Marshall Abdel Hakim Amer, however, he might not have
succeeded,..With his central role as Nasser's surrogate in controlling the
armed forces, Amer had a free hand in discharging his task. He appointed
to command and other key posts officers loyal to him who, in turn,
appointed to lesser positions under their command officers loyal to
them..."
P. J. Vatikiotis, *Nasser and his Generation* (1978), pp. 158-160. Putting
loyalty before military competence had obvious military disadvantages that
would ultimately prove disastrous--but it was also admirably calculated to
"render the officer corps coup-proof" (Vatikotis, p. 161) and thus assure
Nasser's survival.
(Nasser apparently didn't even fully trust his old friend Amer, by the
way--and indeed a rift did occur between the two men many years later--
and, just to be safe, kept direct contacts with some of Amer's
subordinates. But there is no doubt that in 1956 Amer and the people he
appointed to key positions were Nasser loyalists.)
Of course many Egyptian officers had once been associated with Naguib--so
had Nasser himself! But by 1956, those who had sided with Naguib over
Nasser in 1954 or were even suspected of having done so had long been
ousted from important positions. (And if some senior officer did have
some private reservations about Nasser, such an officer could not make a
coup by himself--and could certainly not count on the support of the
younger officers.)
(2) Nasser's popularity: This is one reason that even a secretly anti-
Nasserist officer who had somehow survived the purges of Naguibists and
others might hesitate before trying to start a coup. The attacks on the
privileged classes, the land reform, the emergence of Nasser as a Third
World leader at Bandung and especially his nationalization of the Canal
had made him very popular with the public. Even among some who might have
had reservations about him, there was a sense that he was the only
alternative to the corrupt pre-1952 parties, the assassination-prone
Muslim Brotherhood, and the godless Communists.
(It is of course impossible to absolutely prove the popularity of a leader
in a state without free elections. Maybe the people who manifested
incredible enthusiasm for Nasser in huge demonstrations in 1956 secretly
hated him. All I can say is that this does not seem to have been the
conclusion of observers of Egypt at the time, including some quite hostile
to Nasser.)
Nor is there any evidence that the Anglo-Franco-Israeli invasion
diminished Nasser's popularity or shattered the Egyptian public's morale--
or even that it would have done so had Ike not opposed the invasion. It is
true that at first Nasser had his doubts: "His first thought was whether
the morale of the Egyptian public might crack under the British bombing.
When from his house Nasser heard the Canberra jets and the bombs exploding
on the outskirts of Cairo, at the Al Maza airfield, he drove out through
the streets of the blacked-out capital to the Presidency to get the feel
of the city. He was reassured by the crowds who shouted to him, 'We shall
fight, we shall fight.' He felt he could count on popular support in
organizing Egyptian resistance....When he heard that a group of former
politicians and leading businessmen were considering coming as a
deputation to urge him to compromise with the Anglo-French demands, he
threatened that anyone who came to talk of surrender would be shot on the
spot in the presidency garden." Robert Stephens, *Nasser: A Political
Biography,* pp. 229-30.
You may say that it is easy for crowds to chant defiant slogans at first,
but that this could soon change. But apart from all the evidence from
history of the usual insufficiency of bombing by itself to break national
morale, I will explain in (3) how the particular *kind* of bombing done by
the British was especially unlikely to do so. (Nor do I see the fact that
some businessmen and ex-politicians at first urged Nasser to consider a
compromise a sign of weakness. The old politicians and their allies in
the business community do not exactly seem to have been popular with the
Egyptian people...)
(3) Egypt's military weakness: You make much of this. But it is
something of which Nasser himself was aware, and which he had a strategy
to overcome (and a strategy, incidentally, that did *not* count on Soviet
or American intervention):
"Nasser saw Egyptian civilians as a weapon of last resort. Although he
preferred using properly trained and equipped military forces, if
circumstances deteriorated he planned to transform non-combatants into
combatants. In this scenario, Egypt would wage a 'people's war' against
invaders. Troops were to jettison all military trappings--uniforms and
the like--except their weapons, and disperse incognito into the
population. They would then lead civilians in resisting Anglo-French
occupation.
"For Nasser, the advantage of a 'people's war' was the obliteration of
lines demarcating military and civilian spheres. With this distinction
blurred, British and French soldiers faced dilemmas: who is our enemy,
and under what circumstances are we to use deadly force? Nasser understood
the delicate political nature of allied operations in Egypt and the
intense public scrutiny they entailed; these conditions exacerbated for
Britain and France thorny questions regarding proper rules of engagement.
"If British and French troops aggressively countered the popular
insurgency, many civilians, even those not involved in the 'people's
war,' would die. High civilian casualties would increase pressure in
Britain, France, and abroad to cease hostilities and withdraw from Egypt.
Moreover, such casualties would persuade more Egyptians to resist
occupation, again expanding the conflict in Egypt's favor.
"Alternatively, if Britain and France cautiously countered the 'people's
war,'Egyptian partisans could attack with near impunity by hiding among
crowds of apparent non-combatants. The resulting British and French
casualties might provide the impetus for those countries to abandon
Egypt. Essentially Nasser hoped to replicate in microcosm the asymmetric
strategy of the Algerian revolution, still in its preliminary phase at the
time of the Suez Crisis, but nonetheless showing promise as a way for a
militarily inferior state to vanquish its more powerful adversary." Derk
Varble, *The Suez Crisis 1956*, pp. 87-8
As Varble notes (pp. 88-90), brief as the Suez fighting was, Nasser was
already beginning to implement this strategy, and it was already starting
to slow down the Allied forces before the cease-fire :
"When British and French warplanes attacked Egypt on 31 October, 1956,
Nasser implemented this philosophy. Realizing that an invasion was
imminent, he directed all Egyptians, soldiers and civilians, to resist
Britain and France. Expecting those nations to attack Port Said, he
distributed assault rifles and grenades, instructing recipients to use
them to harass occupying forces at every opportunity.
"Most Egyptian civilians were unfamiliar with sophisticated military
technology, limiting somewhat their effectiveness as partisans. However,
civilians could easily master basic munitions such as grenades. On 5
November several weapons shipments arrived via rail in Port Said; pallets
of grenades, Czech assault rifles, and other devices were available on
street corners, offered to anyone hoping to resist the imminent invasion.
"Probably just a small percentage of Port Said's civilians participated in
hostilities. Nonetheless their 'people's war' had significance.
Relentless sniping forced Royal Marines to seek armored protection when
moving along city streets, hindering their advance. Armed civilians
concealed themselves inside Port Said's buildings; the threat they posed
slowed the progress of soldiers engaged in clearing operations. These
delays prevented a rapid allied breakout from Port Said. When the 7
November UN ceasefire took effect, British and French troops had not
reached al-Qantarah, the next city south of Port Said. After the
ceasefire, Egyptian insurgents continued resisting occupation. They sniped
and threw grenades at patrolling soldiers, inflicting a few casualties at
a time and providing an additional motive for Britain and France to leave
Egypt.
"For Nasser, the Egyptian people had an unambiguous role: resist invading
forces, delay their advance, and swing world opinion into line behind
Egypt. In Anglo-French strategy, by contrast, Egyptian civilians
constituted a paradox. In some ways, the allies, especially the British,
sought to minimize the suffering of the Egyptian people. Indeed, concern
over potential non-combatant casualties forced Eden to abandon
Alexandria as a bridgehead for invasion. While planning the Egyptian
campaign, Mountbatten and other British leaders fretted that attacking
cities would stigmatize them as 'murderers and baby killers' and
injure Britain internationally. During Revise Phase I, in which bombers
struck airfields, Eden repeatedly modified target lists to avoid hitting
civilians, Just before British and French forces stormed Port Said, the
cabinet limited bomb and gun size for aerial and naval bombardment despite
their knowledge that such restrictions might increase British losses.
Although some military commanders disregarded these stipulations, the
restrictions illustrate palpable British concern--political, moral, or
otherwise--at the highest level for non-combatant safety.
"Yet the very success of Revise rested on terrorizing Egypt's civilian
population. Phase II, which Keightly hoped would form the crux of allied
military operations by forcing a regime change in Egypt, attempted to
coerce Egyptians through a bombing offensive. RAF planners who designed
the 'aero-psychological' campaign had full confidence that disrupting
daily life would compel Egypt's people to topple Nasser. Airstrikes
against communications and transportation networks were to be the
mechanism for paralyzing Egyptian society.
"Perhaps recognizing the contradictions in British strategy, and at last
understanding the political repercussions of a terror bombing campaign,
Eden eliminated many of Phase II's more aggressive tactics. Aircrew
resistance and technical challenges undercut other aspects of the aerial
offensive. However, many bombs still fell on Egypt, inflicting scores,
perhaps hundreds, of civilian casualties in Cairo and adjoining areas.
British pilots, operating unfamiliar weapons systems and steeped in an
'area bombing' culture rather than in precision tactics, often placed
ordnance on unintended targets, killing or wounding non-combatants.
International pressure *and an awareness that Phase II served to rally,
not destroy, Egyptian morale* led Keightly to cancel Phase II soon after
its awkward inception.." [my emphasis--DT]
Varble concludes (p. 92) that
"Strategic bombing was the least successful of the aerial missions.
Revise Phase II and its aero-psychological ambitions proved an abject
disappointment...[Eden] failed to grasp how the world might respond to the
sight of British planes raining bombs on Cairo. Also, RAF weapons and
skills were unsuited to the task at hand--disrupting the Egyptian economy
and damaging morale while inflicting minimal civilian casualties. The RAF
had no tradition of pinpoint bombing, and in an era before precision-
guided munitions high-altitude night attacks against specific targets were
were quite difficult. Under these conditions, ordnance dispersed, as
happened during Revise Phase I Canberra and Valiant raids on Egyptian
airfields. In the end, relatively few bombs fell, and those that did
mostly missed, leaving the Egyptian air force intact and Egyptian morale
strong.."
(4) With respect to the argument that time would work against Nasser, I
believe that the exact opposite is the truth. Precisely because it was so
obvious that the objective of the Allies was to bring down Nasser, the
Egyptians could score a moral victory simply by leaving Nasser in power,
and they knew that. With each day Nasser survived, there would be more
and more internal dissent in the West, more and more Allied casualties,
while meanwhile the Suez Canal--the safeguarding of which was the
ostensible object of the operation--would remain closed, and the oil
situation in the West would become worse, not only because of the Canal's
closure but because of the destruction of regional pipelines in Syria.
The Egyptians, too, would suffer casualties, but these would be less
likely to lead to a crack in national unity than in the West--after all,
it was their own country that was being attacked. If the Allies tried to
continue bombing in an attempt to break morale, this would give them the
worst of both worlds--the bombing would inflict enough civilian casualties
to outrage not only Egyptian but world opinion, while being too imprecise
to cripple the Egyptian economy, and not indiscriminate enough to really
terrorize the Egyptian public.
An Egyptian writer noted after the Six Day War that Nasser survived the
loss of that war because, paradoxically, the Egyptians regarded keeping
the man who lost the war in power a kind of "victory" or at least their
best substitute for victory. If that was true in 1967, it would be far
more true in 1956-7 when driving Nasser from power *was* the main motive
of the war, and keeping him in power really *would* therefore be a victory
for Egypt. (Of course Nasser in 1967 was not the only proof that you can
lose a war in the Middle East and still keep power; Saddam Hussein lost
two wars, but it was only when the US and its allies were willing to go
occupy Iraq and go after him physically that he lost his power and
ultimately his life. The UK and France had no stomach for such an
occupation in Egypt in 1956-7. They thought it would not be necessary,
because they thought a limited war would get the Egyptian people to oust
Nasser for them. This sort of attitude is easy to discern and almost
invariably backfires. It may work *if* the leader is really unpopular,
but that was not true of Nasser.)
(5) With regard to your claim that whoever seized power from Nasser would
then accept Allied terms identical in substance to the ones that the
British and French made in their October 30 ultimatum (and which as
anticipated Nasser rejected and the Israelis accepted) and declare
victory: *Nobody* in Egypt would think this was victory or even a
compromise. Nasser ousted, the canal re-opened but under Anglo-French
control, Israel in control of most of Sinai--this would be such an obvious
and terrible defeat that any Egyptian leader who dared to agree to it
would be torn to pieces by an enraged mob--and I mean that literally, not
metaphorically (consider the fate of Nuri es-Said in Iraq in 1958).
If the Western powers were willing to allow Egypt control of the Canal,
then maybe the new rulers could claim they at least got a compromise. But
Britain and France were not willing to have *any* Egyptian government
control the canal. (After all, even a "friendly" government could change
its nature or be overthrown at any time.) Even if the British and French
got the Israelis to withdraw from most of Sinai, that would not be enough.
To Egyptians, Israel was merely a tool of Western imperialism (there were
various reasons for this belief, not the least of which was the widespread
stereotype in the Arab world that Jews lacked the military virtues, so if
Israel scored military victories it was obviously only because Western
imperialism was backing it) and the Sinai operation merely a pretext for
seizure of the Canal.
What would outrage the Egyptians about such a coup and surrender, is that
it would be from their viewpoint an *unnecessary* surrender, not because
of anticipation of Soviet or American aid, but because of a belief that
they could wear down the British and French--a belief that I happen to
think had a good deal to be said for it. The Suez operation was
controversial in Britain even before Ike indicated his disapproval, and
would become more so the more it became apparent that a quick victory was
not in sight.
(6) Soviet aid: I do not think that either Bulganin's implicit threats to
nuke London, Paris, and Tel Aviv or the Soviet media's threats about
Soviet "volunteers" should be taken too seriously. But I do think the
Soviets would send aid to Egypt, both economic and military. Even on the
dubious assumption that the British and French are going to impose a total
air and naval blockade on Egypt, such aid could get in through Libya--if
King Idris would be unwilling to let it through, he would face overthrow
more than a decade before he did in OTL. An all-out blockade of both
Egypt and Libya, covering not only military supplies but even food and
medicine, would be an escalation that I doubt the British and French would
be willing to go through with, or that the US would be willing to support
even if it did not condemn the original Suez operation. For one thing, it
might mean the overthrow of some of the remaining pro-Western governments
in the Middle East, such as Iraq (which of course was to happen within two
years anyway). In any event, doing what they could to help Egypt short of
using nukes or sending troops would be a low-risk proposition for the
Soviets--the US would be no more likely to start a world war over it than
it was over Hungary.
Once again, it is important to remember that the British and French were
*not* counting on an all-out war with Egypt. Hence their need to pretend
that they were merely responding to the dangers posed by the Israeli-
Egyptian war to the Canal; hence the wishful thinking that limited
seizures of territory along the Canal combined with some bombing could
quickly bring down Nasser. This is why I believe the operation would have
been a failure even if the US had not opposed it: When you have a goal
(overthrow of Nasser) and are not willing or able to go all-out in pursuit
of that goal, your enemy senses that fact and takes advantage of it.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sS7S56AIe60/JwI0qGdmXvIJ
Nasser seems to me to have been in a
strong internal position by 1956: the Wafd party had been dissolved after
the 1952 revolution, Naguib and his followers purged from the army in 1954,
and leading Communists imprisoned and the Muslim Brotherhood outlawed that
same year. Just who could challenge him in 1956 any more successfully than
in 1967, when losing the Six Day War doesn't seem to have undermined his
power at all?
Nor is 1967 the only proof that losing a war is not necessarily politically
fatal in the Middle East: note Saddam Hussein's survival after his failures
in his 1980-88 war against Iran and in the Gulf War of 1991. Unless the
Western powers were ready to occupy all of Egypt and go after Nasser
*physically* as the US did with Saddam Hussein in 2003, I don't see him
losing power in 1956. On the contrary, by proclaiming continued guerrilla
resistance against the West and Israel, he could be more of a national hero
than ever. (True, the economy would suffer, but Soviet aid would releive the
situation to some extent.)"
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sS7S56AIe60/xMRqaEZwz5UJ
***
I responded to an objection:
> How does Soviet aid reach Egypt? They can't get it through Israel-
> Sinai. Libya at this time was pro-west, and I think Sudan was still
> British occupied. If you mine or blockade Alexandria harbor, you're
> reduced to smuggling in small boats and dragging materiel through the
> desert. What was Soviet heavy airlift capacity at this time?
>
First of all, I doubt that the UK and France (who maintained the pretence
that they intervened simply in order to "separate" the Egyptian and
Israeli armies) are going to blockade or mine Alexandria (unless the
Soviets try to use it to land troops). Second, even if they do, there
will presumably be *some* airlifting of Soviet aid, though I don't know
just what their capacity was. Third, Idris would be under very severe
pressure to allow at least economic aid to go through to Egypt:
"To protect its alliances with the Western powers and to avoid regional
interference in its domestic affairs, the king chose a policy of
neutrality in the inter-Arab conflicts between the more radical states and
the more conservative ones. Although publicly King Idris supported all the
Arab causes and Libya voted along with other Arab states in the United
Nations, in fact, little else was done.
"Nevertheless, it was almost impossible to remain completely uninvolved in
the affairs of the Arab world. The Suez Canal crisis of 1956, for
instance, affected Libya directly. Despite the fact that the Libyan
government supported Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser's
nationalization of the Suez Canal, an action that could have eroded
British support for Libya, and asked Britain for guarantees that it would
not use its bases in Libya to attack Egypt, the king faced serious
domestic and regional criticism. In Tripoli demonstrations broke out in
support of Nasser and condemning the tripartite attack on Egypt. The
demonstrators demanded the breaking off of relations with France and
Britain and threatened to attack the British forces stationed in Libya.
Egypt intervened directly in the affairs of Libya, by encouraging the
disturbances, distributing arms, and promoting attacks on American and
British military installations. Although the king was able to weather that
storm without having to break off relations with his Western allies or
suffering further retaliation from Egypt, this crisis was the precursoe of
more serious events to come." Bernard Reich (ed.), *Political Leaders of
the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa: A Biographical Dictionary,*
pp. 254-5.
http://books.google.com/books?id=3D5FulN2WqQC&pg=PA254&sig=ACfU3U2wt9bzpdy2KEDAWqBmxwvgtE69og
If Idris could get into so much trouble simply for not breaking off
relations with the UK and France, can you imagine the popular response to
his actually cooperating with them in an economic blockade of Egypt?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sS7S56AIe60/k1qtSlxFr74J
***
And to another Nasser-would-be-doomed advocate:
A few comments on some issues raised by your posts:
(1) The loyalty of the military: This was a matter of the highest
priority for Nasser:
"With the dissolution and proscription of the Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood],
the elimination of General Naguib and the virtual suppression of all
organised party opposition, the RCC [Revolutionary Command Council]
emerged, at the end of 1954, as the undisputed ruling elite--the political
directorate--of Egypt....Within the RCC and the lesser ranks of the Free
Officers, personal loyalty to Nasser soon became the condition for
political survival. Those who initially harboured independent political
views were either relegated to unimportant sinecures or dismissed.
Colonels Ahmad Shawqi and Lufti Wakid of Infantry, for example, were
ejected early on for their leftist tendencies. Kahlid Mohieddin paid the
price for his defection during the Nasser-Naguib rift and for his
Communist leanings with exile to Europe. Muslim Brother Abdul Rauf was
expelled from the Free Officers' executive...
"The combination of his early purges and the defeat of Naguib [in 1954] in
effect put Nasser on the road to controlling the armed forces. Without
Field Marshall Abdel Hakim Amer, however, he might not have
succeeded,..With his central role as Nasser's surrogate in controlling the
armed forces, Amer had a free hand in discharging his task. He appointed
to command and other key posts officers loyal to him who, in turn,
appointed to lesser positions under their command officers loyal to
them..."
P. J. Vatikiotis, *Nasser and his Generation* (1978), pp. 158-160. Putting
loyalty before military competence had obvious military disadvantages that
would ultimately prove disastrous--but it was also admirably calculated to
"render the officer corps coup-proof" (Vatikotis, p. 161) and thus assure
Nasser's survival.
(Nasser apparently didn't even fully trust his old friend Amer, by the
way--and indeed a rift did occur between the two men many years later--
and, just to be safe, kept direct contacts with some of Amer's
subordinates. But there is no doubt that in 1956 Amer and the people he
appointed to key positions were Nasser loyalists.)
Of course many Egyptian officers had once been associated with Naguib--so
had Nasser himself! But by 1956, those who had sided with Naguib over
Nasser in 1954 or were even suspected of having done so had long been
ousted from important positions. (And if some senior officer did have
some private reservations about Nasser, such an officer could not make a
coup by himself--and could certainly not count on the support of the
younger officers.)
(2) Nasser's popularity: This is one reason that even a secretly anti-
Nasserist officer who had somehow survived the purges of Naguibists and
others might hesitate before trying to start a coup. The attacks on the
privileged classes, the land reform, the emergence of Nasser as a Third
World leader at Bandung and especially his nationalization of the Canal
had made him very popular with the public. Even among some who might have
had reservations about him, there was a sense that he was the only
alternative to the corrupt pre-1952 parties, the assassination-prone
Muslim Brotherhood, and the godless Communists.
(It is of course impossible to absolutely prove the popularity of a leader
in a state without free elections. Maybe the people who manifested
incredible enthusiasm for Nasser in huge demonstrations in 1956 secretly
hated him. All I can say is that this does not seem to have been the
conclusion of observers of Egypt at the time, including some quite hostile
to Nasser.)
Nor is there any evidence that the Anglo-Franco-Israeli invasion
diminished Nasser's popularity or shattered the Egyptian public's morale--
or even that it would have done so had Ike not opposed the invasion. It is
true that at first Nasser had his doubts: "His first thought was whether
the morale of the Egyptian public might crack under the British bombing.
When from his house Nasser heard the Canberra jets and the bombs exploding
on the outskirts of Cairo, at the Al Maza airfield, he drove out through
the streets of the blacked-out capital to the Presidency to get the feel
of the city. He was reassured by the crowds who shouted to him, 'We shall
fight, we shall fight.' He felt he could count on popular support in
organizing Egyptian resistance....When he heard that a group of former
politicians and leading businessmen were considering coming as a
deputation to urge him to compromise with the Anglo-French demands, he
threatened that anyone who came to talk of surrender would be shot on the
spot in the presidency garden." Robert Stephens, *Nasser: A Political
Biography,* pp. 229-30.
You may say that it is easy for crowds to chant defiant slogans at first,
but that this could soon change. But apart from all the evidence from
history of the usual insufficiency of bombing by itself to break national
morale, I will explain in (3) how the particular *kind* of bombing done by
the British was especially unlikely to do so. (Nor do I see the fact that
some businessmen and ex-politicians at first urged Nasser to consider a
compromise a sign of weakness. The old politicians and their allies in
the business community do not exactly seem to have been popular with the
Egyptian people...)
(3) Egypt's military weakness: You make much of this. But it is
something of which Nasser himself was aware, and which he had a strategy
to overcome (and a strategy, incidentally, that did *not* count on Soviet
or American intervention):
"Nasser saw Egyptian civilians as a weapon of last resort. Although he
preferred using properly trained and equipped military forces, if
circumstances deteriorated he planned to transform non-combatants into
combatants. In this scenario, Egypt would wage a 'people's war' against
invaders. Troops were to jettison all military trappings--uniforms and
the like--except their weapons, and disperse incognito into the
population. They would then lead civilians in resisting Anglo-French
occupation.
"For Nasser, the advantage of a 'people's war' was the obliteration of
lines demarcating military and civilian spheres. With this distinction
blurred, British and French soldiers faced dilemmas: who is our enemy,
and under what circumstances are we to use deadly force? Nasser understood
the delicate political nature of allied operations in Egypt and the
intense public scrutiny they entailed; these conditions exacerbated for
Britain and France thorny questions regarding proper rules of engagement.
"If British and French troops aggressively countered the popular
insurgency, many civilians, even those not involved in the 'people's
war,' would die. High civilian casualties would increase pressure in
Britain, France, and abroad to cease hostilities and withdraw from Egypt.
Moreover, such casualties would persuade more Egyptians to resist
occupation, again expanding the conflict in Egypt's favor.
"Alternatively, if Britain and France cautiously countered the 'people's
war,'Egyptian partisans could attack with near impunity by hiding among
crowds of apparent non-combatants. The resulting British and French
casualties might provide the impetus for those countries to abandon
Egypt. Essentially Nasser hoped to replicate in microcosm the asymmetric
strategy of the Algerian revolution, still in its preliminary phase at the
time of the Suez Crisis, but nonetheless showing promise as a way for a
militarily inferior state to vanquish its more powerful adversary." Derk
Varble, *The Suez Crisis 1956*, pp. 87-8
As Varble notes (pp. 88-90), brief as the Suez fighting was, Nasser was
already beginning to implement this strategy, and it was already starting
to slow down the Allied forces before the cease-fire :
"When British and French warplanes attacked Egypt on 31 October, 1956,
Nasser implemented this philosophy. Realizing that an invasion was
imminent, he directed all Egyptians, soldiers and civilians, to resist
Britain and France. Expecting those nations to attack Port Said, he
distributed assault rifles and grenades, instructing recipients to use
them to harass occupying forces at every opportunity.
"Most Egyptian civilians were unfamiliar with sophisticated military
technology, limiting somewhat their effectiveness as partisans. However,
civilians could easily master basic munitions such as grenades. On 5
November several weapons shipments arrived via rail in Port Said; pallets
of grenades, Czech assault rifles, and other devices were available on
street corners, offered to anyone hoping to resist the imminent invasion.
"Probably just a small percentage of Port Said's civilians participated in
hostilities. Nonetheless their 'people's war' had significance.
Relentless sniping forced Royal Marines to seek armored protection when
moving along city streets, hindering their advance. Armed civilians
concealed themselves inside Port Said's buildings; the threat they posed
slowed the progress of soldiers engaged in clearing operations. These
delays prevented a rapid allied breakout from Port Said. When the 7
November UN ceasefire took effect, British and French troops had not
reached al-Qantarah, the next city south of Port Said. After the
ceasefire, Egyptian insurgents continued resisting occupation. They sniped
and threw grenades at patrolling soldiers, inflicting a few casualties at
a time and providing an additional motive for Britain and France to leave
Egypt.
"For Nasser, the Egyptian people had an unambiguous role: resist invading
forces, delay their advance, and swing world opinion into line behind
Egypt. In Anglo-French strategy, by contrast, Egyptian civilians
constituted a paradox. In some ways, the allies, especially the British,
sought to minimize the suffering of the Egyptian people. Indeed, concern
over potential non-combatant casualties forced Eden to abandon
Alexandria as a bridgehead for invasion. While planning the Egyptian
campaign, Mountbatten and other British leaders fretted that attacking
cities would stigmatize them as 'murderers and baby killers' and
injure Britain internationally. During Revise Phase I, in which bombers
struck airfields, Eden repeatedly modified target lists to avoid hitting
civilians, Just before British and French forces stormed Port Said, the
cabinet limited bomb and gun size for aerial and naval bombardment despite
their knowledge that such restrictions might increase British losses.
Although some military commanders disregarded these stipulations, the
restrictions illustrate palpable British concern--political, moral, or
otherwise--at the highest level for non-combatant safety.
"Yet the very success of Revise rested on terrorizing Egypt's civilian
population. Phase II, which Keightly hoped would form the crux of allied
military operations by forcing a regime change in Egypt, attempted to
coerce Egyptians through a bombing offensive. RAF planners who designed
the 'aero-psychological' campaign had full confidence that disrupting
daily life would compel Egypt's people to topple Nasser. Airstrikes
against communications and transportation networks were to be the
mechanism for paralyzing Egyptian society.
"Perhaps recognizing the contradictions in British strategy, and at last
understanding the political repercussions of a terror bombing campaign,
Eden eliminated many of Phase II's more aggressive tactics. Aircrew
resistance and technical challenges undercut other aspects of the aerial
offensive. However, many bombs still fell on Egypt, inflicting scores,
perhaps hundreds, of civilian casualties in Cairo and adjoining areas.
British pilots, operating unfamiliar weapons systems and steeped in an
'area bombing' culture rather than in precision tactics, often placed
ordnance on unintended targets, killing or wounding non-combatants.
International pressure *and an awareness that Phase II served to rally,
not destroy, Egyptian morale* led Keightly to cancel Phase II soon after
its awkward inception.." [my emphasis--DT]
Varble concludes (p. 92) that
"Strategic bombing was the least successful of the aerial missions.
Revise Phase II and its aero-psychological ambitions proved an abject
disappointment...[Eden] failed to grasp how the world might respond to the
sight of British planes raining bombs on Cairo. Also, RAF weapons and
skills were unsuited to the task at hand--disrupting the Egyptian economy
and damaging morale while inflicting minimal civilian casualties. The RAF
had no tradition of pinpoint bombing, and in an era before precision-
guided munitions high-altitude night attacks against specific targets were
were quite difficult. Under these conditions, ordnance dispersed, as
happened during Revise Phase I Canberra and Valiant raids on Egyptian
airfields. In the end, relatively few bombs fell, and those that did
mostly missed, leaving the Egyptian air force intact and Egyptian morale
strong.."
(4) With respect to the argument that time would work against Nasser, I
believe that the exact opposite is the truth. Precisely because it was so
obvious that the objective of the Allies was to bring down Nasser, the
Egyptians could score a moral victory simply by leaving Nasser in power,
and they knew that. With each day Nasser survived, there would be more
and more internal dissent in the West, more and more Allied casualties,
while meanwhile the Suez Canal--the safeguarding of which was the
ostensible object of the operation--would remain closed, and the oil
situation in the West would become worse, not only because of the Canal's
closure but because of the destruction of regional pipelines in Syria.
The Egyptians, too, would suffer casualties, but these would be less
likely to lead to a crack in national unity than in the West--after all,
it was their own country that was being attacked. If the Allies tried to
continue bombing in an attempt to break morale, this would give them the
worst of both worlds--the bombing would inflict enough civilian casualties
to outrage not only Egyptian but world opinion, while being too imprecise
to cripple the Egyptian economy, and not indiscriminate enough to really
terrorize the Egyptian public.
An Egyptian writer noted after the Six Day War that Nasser survived the
loss of that war because, paradoxically, the Egyptians regarded keeping
the man who lost the war in power a kind of "victory" or at least their
best substitute for victory. If that was true in 1967, it would be far
more true in 1956-7 when driving Nasser from power *was* the main motive
of the war, and keeping him in power really *would* therefore be a victory
for Egypt. (Of course Nasser in 1967 was not the only proof that you can
lose a war in the Middle East and still keep power; Saddam Hussein lost
two wars, but it was only when the US and its allies were willing to go
occupy Iraq and go after him physically that he lost his power and
ultimately his life. The UK and France had no stomach for such an
occupation in Egypt in 1956-7. They thought it would not be necessary,
because they thought a limited war would get the Egyptian people to oust
Nasser for them. This sort of attitude is easy to discern and almost
invariably backfires. It may work *if* the leader is really unpopular,
but that was not true of Nasser.)
(5) With regard to your claim that whoever seized power from Nasser would
then accept Allied terms identical in substance to the ones that the
British and French made in their October 30 ultimatum (and which as
anticipated Nasser rejected and the Israelis accepted) and declare
victory: *Nobody* in Egypt would think this was victory or even a
compromise. Nasser ousted, the canal re-opened but under Anglo-French
control, Israel in control of most of Sinai--this would be such an obvious
and terrible defeat that any Egyptian leader who dared to agree to it
would be torn to pieces by an enraged mob--and I mean that literally, not
metaphorically (consider the fate of Nuri es-Said in Iraq in 1958).
If the Western powers were willing to allow Egypt control of the Canal,
then maybe the new rulers could claim they at least got a compromise. But
Britain and France were not willing to have *any* Egyptian government
control the canal. (After all, even a "friendly" government could change
its nature or be overthrown at any time.) Even if the British and French
got the Israelis to withdraw from most of Sinai, that would not be enough.
To Egyptians, Israel was merely a tool of Western imperialism (there were
various reasons for this belief, not the least of which was the widespread
stereotype in the Arab world that Jews lacked the military virtues, so if
Israel scored military victories it was obviously only because Western
imperialism was backing it) and the Sinai operation merely a pretext for
seizure of the Canal.
What would outrage the Egyptians about such a coup and surrender, is that
it would be from their viewpoint an *unnecessary* surrender, not because
of anticipation of Soviet or American aid, but because of a belief that
they could wear down the British and French--a belief that I happen to
think had a good deal to be said for it. The Suez operation was
controversial in Britain even before Ike indicated his disapproval, and
would become more so the more it became apparent that a quick victory was
not in sight.
(6) Soviet aid: I do not think that either Bulganin's implicit threats to
nuke London, Paris, and Tel Aviv or the Soviet media's threats about
Soviet "volunteers" should be taken too seriously. But I do think the
Soviets would send aid to Egypt, both economic and military. Even on the
dubious assumption that the British and French are going to impose a total
air and naval blockade on Egypt, such aid could get in through Libya--if
King Idris would be unwilling to let it through, he would face overthrow
more than a decade before he did in OTL. An all-out blockade of both
Egypt and Libya, covering not only military supplies but even food and
medicine, would be an escalation that I doubt the British and French would
be willing to go through with, or that the US would be willing to support
even if it did not condemn the original Suez operation. For one thing, it
might mean the overthrow of some of the remaining pro-Western governments
in the Middle East, such as Iraq (which of course was to happen within two
years anyway). In any event, doing what they could to help Egypt short of
using nukes or sending troops would be a low-risk proposition for the
Soviets--the US would be no more likely to start a world war over it than
it was over Hungary.
Once again, it is important to remember that the British and French were
*not* counting on an all-out war with Egypt. Hence their need to pretend
that they were merely responding to the dangers posed by the Israeli-
Egyptian war to the Canal; hence the wishful thinking that limited
seizures of territory along the Canal combined with some bombing could
quickly bring down Nasser. This is why I believe the operation would have
been a failure even if the US had not opposed it: When you have a goal
(overthrow of Nasser) and are not willing or able to go all-out in pursuit
of that goal, your enemy senses that fact and takes advantage of it.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/sS7S56AIe60/JwI0qGdmXvIJ
Riain
Banned
A big problem for the British was their lack of preparedness for the Suez conflict. It took the British 5 months from the nationalisation of the Canal and closure of the Straits of Tiran in June to gather and retrain the forces needed, in particular aircraft carriers, landing ships and 16 Airborne Brigade. This lack of preparedness will limit any alternative courses of action with regards to military action.
If Suez had been supported by the US there would have been huge global consequences as Britain would remain an engaged global power for at least a decade or two. The stupid 1957 Defence White Paper and the 1958 Winds of Change speech would have been very different as would the TSR2 and CVA01 debacles.
If Suez had been supported by the US there would have been huge global consequences as Britain would remain an engaged global power for at least a decade or two. The stupid 1957 Defence White Paper and the 1958 Winds of Change speech would have been very different as would the TSR2 and CVA01 debacles.
Of course if Nasser were to go down - and no before some says it the British were not looking to re-colonise Egypt, they'd already agreed to a phased withdrawal and handover of the Suez Canal - the question then becomes what happens to Arab Nationalism as an ideology considering that he purposely linked himself so closely with it and what if anything replaces it? One suggestion that's been made in previous threads has been an earlier rise of political Islam. If someone like Naguib, but not necessarily the man himself, were to end up heading the Egyptian military and ease off some of the political repression then that could be a possibility. In places like Syria which IIRC was the closet of the regional states to the Soviets you could see them become more socialist at least in image. I did consider a timeline where that happened only for the military to use the defeat in a Six Day War analogue to blame the civilians and re-take control of the government but never got around to writing it properly.
Assuming the USA backs up the Suez effort, the UK and France will have to permanently re-occupy the canal otherwise another government down the line can re-nationalize it. I would also expect that the price to be paid to the Israelis would involve the Sinai. At a minimum Israel would expect demilitarization, sovereignty under the UN or something similar (not a "Palestinian" government or Egyptian rule). More likely Israel might want sovereignty to the canal zone border, or at least halfway across to the passes and down to the Straits of Tiran. The population of the Sinai including Gaza & the Bedouin in 1956 was between 250,000 and 400,000 at the most. If the Israelis take over I can see much of the Gaza population encouraged to move.